Sega‘s classic hack-and-slash video game series Shinobi is being turned into a movie, and the director behind Extraction and Extraction 2 is making it.
Sega announced in a press release that it’s teaming up with Universal Studios to make the Shinobi movie, 37 years after the first game in the series released on arcades on the Sega System 16 board in 1987. The adaptation is being directed by Sam Hargrave, who’s best known for helming the 2020 action thriller Extraction as well as its 2023 sequel, both starring Chris Hemsworth. Hargrave is also directing a third film in the Extraction series that was announced at last year’s Netflix Tudum festival, with Hemsworth returning to lead the cast.
Ken Kobayashi (Sunny, Move On) is adapting the screenplay for Shinobi.
The Shinobi series has featured a number of protagonists through its long history, but its flagship hero is the one that starred in the first five games, Joe Musashi, a member of the Oboro ninja clan. Neither Sega nor Universal have revealed specific plot details, but it sounds like it’ll indeed focus on Joe Musashi confronting a “great evil”, according to the press release.
In the original game, Musashi’s tranquil mountain life is thrown into chaos when the ninja crime syndicate Zeed rises to power and tries to take Japan back to the Sengoku period of Japan when the country was gripped by civil war and ninjas thrived.
A new Shinobi game was revealed in December 2023 with no concrete release date or window.
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